Remember
the Sharks and the Jets in West Side Story? They were rival gangs, and they were always in trouble. Today's lesson recalled a
scene where some of the Jets are being arrested by Officer Krupke, and they’re
looking to blame someone else. “It’s just our bringing-upke that gets us out of
hand,” they sing. (How do you rhyme with "Krupke"? That was one of the greatest rhyming schemes of all
time). “I’m depraved on account of I’m deprived!” sings one.
Ezekiel
heard that all the time. God had
assigned him to prophesy to the Israelites in their exile in Babylon--the
second great exile in the history of the Hebrews. They’re in despair and
anguish, and they want to know: what
have we done to deserve this? An old
proverb came to mind: “The parents have sour grapes and the children’s teeth are
set of edge.” That must be it, they concluded. We are being punished for
something our ancestors did!! Right?
Wrong, Ezekiel said. God rejects that proverb. God is not going to let the exiles exonerate
themselves of responsibility for their situation. They neither earn a pass if
their parents were righteous, nor are they punished for the sinful actions of
their parents. Each generation has the choice to make. Each may choose life.
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| Sacred heart ©2010 Lorena Angulo |
This teaching is in tension with other
Biblical sayings, especially in Exodus, that warn that the sins of the fathers
are visited on their children. These
verses warn that patterns of human sin take root in family systems. Violence, arrogance, or victimhood, become calcified. In social systems, caste,
privilege, discrimination, or segregation become embedded. These are real. They
are difficult to dismantle. But they are
of human making. They are surely not of God. They are not what God wants for God’s
people.
Ezekiel
has what sounds like bad news to the Israelites, who want to be off the hook. But
the good news embedded in the bad is that God brings hope to each new
generation, and God will give us a new heart, if we will break the pattern of
our ancestors, and choose life. We carry our family legacy with us. We inherit a
name; property; a prominent nose, in my case; and family stories—including
stories that make us proud, or ashamed. These legacies often stick to us.
They often require healing to shed. But
they needn’t define us, because each one of us is a new and precious creation.
And God hopes ardently that every new generation will choose life.
I
have been thinking about the sins of my ancestors.
When
I was a child, I came to understand my father was descended from slave-owners.
I don’t remember how or when I came to know it. But one day, I learned that a faculty member at my junior high school, an African-American,
was named Andrew Allison. That’s my brother’s name. That’s my grandfather’s
name. And that was the name of my great-great-grandfather, who came to this
country from Scotland, and married into a slave-owning family. One day I asked
my father, could this Andrew Allison be related to enslaved people from an
Allison plantation? My father looked at
me for a long time. Then he said, “No. NO. I don’t think that is possible. And I
never want you to say that to anyone. Ever.”
I
got the message.
I
think my father was afraid I would say something that would get me hurt, or that I would hurt someone. I grew up during the Civil Rights era. There was a lot of racial
tension in the local schools. The Detroit race riots had rocked the region. And
I think my father was ashamed. He supported
Civil Rights, and we talked about them. But our own family story was not a part
of that. And so, I set it aside, for a long, long time.
It
must have been a particular shooting, and a particular bitter protest that
followed, full of anguish and rage and fear.
But at one point I thought—what is going on? How have we made so little progress
since my childhood? We have better laws.
We’ve had a black president. But race still divides so many of us. The work is
not done. There is no peace. There is no justice. There is no reconciliation.
And
I began to ask myself—where do I fit into this? I thought the right things,
said the right words, didn’t say the wrong words, expressed an acceptable amount
of outrage on Facebook. Whatever I had done—I realized it was nowhere near enough.
Because here we are. And I decided I had to start with the truth of my own story.
A
lot of people are tracing slavery in their heritage, African-Americans and
white people alike—and they need each other. I joined an organization, Coming to the Table,
that brings people together to support each other in this work, believing that
in finding the truth together, we do the work of reconciliation. Sharon, a genealogist
who has been helping me, found the slave registry of an ancestor with more than
100 enslaved people on the registry—a big number in those days. I learned that at least some of them also
had had children by white fathers.
The more I learn, the more what seemed to be
rooted in the past comes into the present for me. I began to understand that some
of my ancestors were enslaved people, and well as enslavers. I saw that the
work of racial reconciliation became more personal to me. It emerged out of the past,
and became relevant to me, to my generation.
Far from being punished for my ancestors’ sins, I
realized I had benefited from slavery.
Back in Scotland, my ancestors were on
the Scottish Census rolls as “laborers.” Some were killed in a typhus epidemic;
others ended up on the poor rolls. But my great-great-grandfather had made
good. When he and his brother came to New Orleans, they went into the cotton
export business. Somewhere along the
line, he met a plantation owner, who introduced him to his daughter. And so,
the first of the Allisons married into the slave trade.
Turn
then, and live, says the prophet. If God does not hold me responsible for the
sins of my ancestors, how am I nevertheless accountable to God today? It
begins, for me, in truth--truth about my family, truth about how I have
benefited from their legacy. Truth--because as Desmond Tutu said, “true
reconciliation is based on forgiveness, and forgiveness is based on true
confession.”
Since
I have taken up my ancestry research, I am part of a new community. And I am learning
from people who have stories with the same themes as mine. I am finding a lightness in the truth. I
am finding grace in not being judged for what my ancestors did. But I also feel the
accountability to my community for the choices I make. For the new
awareness I reflect. For actions I take that lead to reconciliation. Or
for my inaction—the things I fail to do. Those are on me.
We
all have our own family histories to work out.
Each generation is being called to account for ourselves, in our own
time. To get a new heart. To face the
truth of the past. And then to turn, and live. That’s what the prophet says.
And
this is a call not just to individuals, but to communities. Roman colonies like
Philippi, the community to whom Paul wrote, were deeply socially stratified,
engaged in what historian Joseph Hellerman called “a relentless quest for the acquisition and preservation of
personal and familial honor.” They staked claims to privilege and patronage
that set them apart from others. This was one of the divisions in that congregation in Philippi.
Paul entreats them to empty themselves of their power and privilege, to give it
up in humility and model themselves after Jesus, beginning to regard others as
better than themselves.
Likewise,
Francis, whom we honor this week, was born of an elite family in Assisi, the
son of a prosperous silk merchant and a noblewoman. Francis looked at the
church around him and saw too much wealth.
He came to know Jesus as one who stood for the poor and defenseless, and
he ended up giving away his own possessions—even his reputation. Coming
into community with the poor around him, he got himself a new heart. He founded a community so committed to poverty
that they begged for their living. His family was horrified, and saw this as a
terrible fall. Francis had set aside his legacy of wealth and privilege. He saw it as spiritually dead. Instead, he chose life, and the Franciscans were born.
The second son in our Gospel story makes his
decision in an instant to change his mind, to change his heart, and follow the
will of the Father. Whatever our lineage,
whatever wrongs we ourselves have committed—whether five minutes or five
hundred years ago--our past is neither a curse on us nor our salvation. We can break the pattern of past generations
and begin to dismantle systems of sin. We do this by adopting the same mind as Christ Jesus: Where we find hatred, we can sow love; where we
find injury, we pardon; where there is
discord, we work for unity.
For
we are only here. And there is only now. So let’s not waste the opportunity to work out
our salvation for ourselves, to fashion our lives in response to the call of
God in our own place and time.
Turn,
then, and live!!
--o--
Preached October 1, 2017, St Gabriel Episcopal Church, Portland, OR.
